I agree with Tom here. There are not enough places to ride off
road vehicles. But there is a larger underlying problem here
too: there is no where and nothing for older kids to do at all
in this town, that is safe or legal.

We used to have a pool hall
and an arcade, and still that wasn't enough, and now those are
long gone. The rec center is not really geared towards kids of
the age group I'm discussing here, which is 14-23 year olds (kids
at heart?)

One of the main problems I
see is that none of the adults in charge of local affairs are
willing to help anyone out who tries to put something for them
to do in. Last year I personally tried to start a paintball league/field.
I had some land arranged, thanks to one of those kids at heart,
and all I needed was insurance for it. Granted paintball can
be a dangerous sport, and the insurance was going to run around
$4200 a year. This amount, we could have probably swung. It was
the $1500 down that we couldn't. If I had taken advances, say
6months up front, then they wouldn't have been paying the next
months, and we couldn't have made the monthly payments. Not to
mention, how many people are going to pay before they can play?
Kind of a catch-22. When I had exhausted all my own resources
to get this done, I hung my head and stepped into the borough
office. As expected, I got the little run around.

It was my feeling that the
Rec. department's goal of providing recreation for the citizens
of the borough would fall easily into putting a paintball league
under their insurance. Seemed reasonable to me, but unfortunately,
not to them (as I wholly expected). This is the kind of problem
that stops people from even trying to get anything done. We get
the run around, and then we get what happened next.

A group of paintballers had
been playing out at Mud Bight. I had never got the chance to
go, but I hear it is a great spot. Well, a few days after they
played, I get a call at home, from the borough office. They tell
me about all sorts of trash that was left there, and complaints
that paint (which is water soluble I might add) had stained some
buildings. They tell me to stop playing there, etc. I informed
them that it was not me or my associates that played there, and
that we tend to take our trash out and wouldn't be dumb enough
to play near buildings. The call ends with the office person
trying to have me be the paintball police and tell off these
other kids because I know who it is etc., etc.

I have gotten several calls
to date, 4 or 5. Each one running about the same thing.

You see here in lies the problem.
If the people who are supposed to be helping us get things done,
and making the community better, safer and more fun for everyone,
start attacking groups and making it highly implausible to get
anything done, no one will continue to try and do it.

We all know we as a city/borough
have a problem with kids being vandals, and getting into various
degrees of trouble, be it drugs, or other. Things for them to
do other than these self destructive activities would lessen
these problems. Logic... IF one has something fun to do, that
is not illegal, THEN one will not do illegal things (as much).
Obviously there will be exceptions to this, and there will be
lapses into deviant behaviors, but on the whole, I truly believe
that if we give the youth of our community something to do, a
paintball field, a pool hall, an 18+casino, a dance club/hall,
then we will see decreases in drug abuse, and youth related crimes
as a whole.

The casino reference is a personal
preference. I love hold'em poker. I fully realize that a casino
would require rewriting state laws. Just a bit of wishful thinking.